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Allsvenskan and Superettan player update

With Allsvenskan back in action after the summer break and the transfer window approaching, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at some individual player stats. Some players have already left the league for new challenges abroad, and when the window opens on July 15th we’ll likely see some moves between Swedish clubs as well. Given the limitations of my database, this post will focus on attacking players as the most advanced data available is shot coordinates.

I usually don’t write about Sweden’s second tier Superettan, simply because I don’t follow it at all, but as there are several players who could move to Allsvenskan and even abroad, I’ve also looked at players from this league.

So let’s start with taking a look at which players have produced the highest number of goals, assists and Expected Goals so far this season. I’ve only included players who have played 1/3 of the league so far (390 and 450 mins for Allsvenskan and Superettan, respectively) and also looked closer at younger players, splitting them into two groups: players aged 20-23 and players aged up to 19.

Allsvenskan

Player profiles

There are some players in the plots above worth looking closer at. Let’s start out with last year’s top scorer, Emir Kujovic:Kujovic has just recently signed with Belgian side Gent, leaving reigning champions Norrköping after a couple of highly productive seasons. His goal and xG output this season are on par with last season’s but he’s also doubled his assists per 90 minutes, having been involved in almost a goal per game this season. I don’t know much about Belgian football, but given the right kind of attacking style he may very well score some goals over there.

Häcken’s Paulo De Oliveira, or Paulinho as he’s called, leads the league in assists+goals per 90 with his impressing 1.13 made up of just goals. Having overperformed against xG since his return to Swedish football, Paulinho may very well be the best finisher in the league.

With Malmö struggling to capitalise on their xG last season, Vidar Kjartansson has grown into a very good signing for them. I haven’t seen him played that much, but given his shot profile he looks just like the strong center forward scoring from mostly inside the box they needed to gradually phase out the aging Markus Rosenberg.

Struggling to take a regular spot at Malmö for the last couple of seasons, Pawel Cibicki’s move to newcomers Jönköpings Södra has worked out well for him. With more playing time, he has continued to improve his goal output and given his age he could be on his way to a bigger club abroad soon.

One who has already taken the next step is AIK’s loan Carlos Strandberg, who after struggling at Russian CSKA Moscow returned to Sweden this season. The young and forceful striker continued where he picked up and has been crucial for his club this season. From his shot profile we can see that he favours shooting from the left, mostly due to his powerful left foot. Set to return to Russia soon, Strandberg will make his last game against Malmö this weekend.

Leading the youngest players in xG per 90 is another AIK striker, 16 year old Alexander Isak, who has impressed so far and is supposedly targetted by a number of big European clubs. Yeah, the sample size is small but given his very young age he’s done well and should he continue to improve he could grown into a class player.

Superettan

As I’ve said, I very rarely watch Superettan so I know next to nothing about most players in the league. Here I’ve just picked out a few interesting players from the ranking below to look closer at, and I’ll leave the shot profiles uncommented.

That’s it for now, but if you want to see shot profiles from any other player in these leagues, just hit me up on Twitter.

[…] on team performance. Now it’s time to have a look at individual players, much like I did back in July. Though there now exists detailed Opta data for Allsvenskan, my work on this site has mostly been […]